I had someone ask me today, “Is off-page or on-page SEO more important?”
It opened up some good dialogue that I often have with others and I wanted to share my answer.
Long-term, off-page optimization will (usually) contribute more to growth than on-page. But off-page optimization will only be as effective as your on-page optimization is strong. That’s why when I board a new client, we always work on on-page optimization first, get everything fixed, then proceed to off-page optimization.
This discussion also brought up a question about what the “best types of SEO’s are?” In my opinion, there are two types of SEO’s.
- High risk, high reward that go for quick (short term) gains through risk and experimentation.
- Diligent, patient, long-term-play SEO’s that stick to the basics that will (theoretically) never change.
The way Google displays results has changed more than the way it reads the data that it will later use for those results.
If you think about it, you can only rank for what Google can read. The way it displays those results (mobile) or intakes your questions (voice) may change, but Google still has to acquire (read) data to spit out as a search result from somewhere.
There have certainly been changes in what tactics you pursue, but the core of those tactics are the same; content and backlinks.